Jordy Blog

Places to Go, People to Meet

I’m pleased with how much opportunity for personal development and professional networking there is in Utah. Yes, I do want to see it grow even more, but it’s nice have more good options than I could possibly attend.

Tonight for example, the Utah Tech Events and Utah Business Events calendars show four events in which I have genuine interested, all occurring at the same time.  At 7:30 tonight I would be perfectly content to be at any of these four events:

1. Twelve Horses: Brand Evolution
2. Ignite Salt Lake
3. BYU Web Startup Group
4. Utah Python Users Group

Incidentally, I’d also enjoy being at home with my family, but this abundance of events centered around professional networking and personal development shows that Utah really does have a great (albeit budding) tech and business ecosystem. These mostly non-profit knowledge-sharing groups constitute, I believe, some crucial intangibles that are important underpinnings to a vibrant economy. I’m glad to see them, and I’d love to see them grow.

Anyway, there’s no excuse to not be developing your personal and professional skills at some of these events. Just don’t try to substitute them for hard and diligent work. :)

If you’d like to be a contributor to out local tech and business calendars, please ping me or any of the other calendar admins. Especially if you’ve got a utah-based business or tech group and would like a channel to attract more people, we’d love to hear from you.

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UVEF Free Trial Memberships

My friend John Gilbert sent me this link for a free month of membership in UVEF (the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum). I’ve been attending some of their monthly meetings on an a-la-carte basis and have found them to be generally quite enjoyable. It’s obviously good Utah networking as well. If you’re a Utah entrepreneur or even have entrepreneurial ambitions, you should give UVEF a try.

This promotion ends September 10.

Geek Dinner a Success

DevUtah’s recent Geek Dinner was successful. The food was good but may have been a little too sparse for a guy who had missed lunch. It was good to meet some of the people who volunteered to help out though. We’ve got a lot to do, but I think we have the momentum to make things happen.

I was particularly happy to hear Stuart Jansen and others say that DevUtah needs a calendar for tech events in Utah. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past posting a myriad of user groups’ announcements to uvlug.org, but it can be really time consuming. Hopefully with DevUtah we’ll have an easy way for everyone to post events to a joint calendar so we can have more cross pollination between user groups, solo-nerds, and business folks.

Geek dinners are just one way that DevUtah is is trying to create a culture of collaboration in Utah. I think these events will be positive force for Utah business, especially in the tech sector. I hope everyone is making some good contacts, and I hope that some of those will be foundations for successful ventures in Utah.